Bandwidth: Meet hip-hop artists the DIME

On January 16, the DIME performed at the Washington Inn in downtown Oakland.

As part of a new collaborative effort between Oakland North and its partner site Richmond Confidential, we’ve started a new series called Bandwidth to profile fresh music coming out of these two East Bay cities. The first profile is about a Richmond hip-hop duo called the DIME. The group’s two members, Chioke Jelani Clanton and Knightshift, grew up in South Richmond and now they often record and perform in Oakland. They describe their sound as East Bay soul and are expecting to release their first album, Brickyard Cove, in April.

Together, the two have formed one of the newest incarnations of a long line of local rap duos including Land of Da Lost, C.I.N., Subliminal Icons, and The Frontline. “I remember being around a lot of these guys when I was younger, and being able to hear them kick rhymes out on the corner, like very organic,” said Clanton. “A lot of the imagery they used were our streets, our problems, our mayors, and our teachers. Just what was going on.”

Clanton said those encounters taught him how to write about his own experiences growing up in Richmond. He referred to a line from a Melle Mel song that encapsulated many of his teenage years: “Don’t push me ‘cuz I’m close to the edge/I’m trying not to lose my head.”

“A lot of times our thoughts were with the here and now, very angry. Fathers not around and things like that, a lot of social ills, a lot of high crime and violence,” he said. “So you know what’s the righteous path to walk, but there’s times when you about to lose your head because you’re young and immature and you don’t know how to deal with certain things and see everything in black and white.”